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Through the Layers Pt.1 | Exhibition by Antonio McAfee

Through the Layers Pt.1 | Exhibition by Antonio McAfee

Join us on Saturday, July 8th from 7-10pm for the opening of Antonio McAfee's "Through the Layers Pt. 1" solo exhibition.

Exhibition runs July 8 - July 29
Open Gallery Hours: Saturdays 1-5pm

Appropriating photographs from W.E.B Du Bois and Thomas Calloway’s Exhibition of American Negroes (1900) into various 3D images and collages, McAfee attempts to provide alternate ways to see black figures, ways that allow for the subjects to have multitudes of possibilities, real and imagined within a still image. In McAfee’s exhibition Through the Layers Pt. 1, the reimagined images provide a less static and more inexplicable depictions of the individuals, breaking down their image to reveal red and blue versions that play with the act of viewing and perception. Shifting positions while viewing the images allows the audience to view these sitters in a state that is in flux, opening up an engagement that is physical and pictorial and aims to redefine normality.

The photography series by Du Bois and Calloway was commissioned by congress and support from Historically Black Colleges and Universities in order to provide a pictorial, economic/social, and legislative survey of middle-class African Americans in Georgia, which consisted of studio portraits, Georgia black codes (laws pertaining to blacks from 1732), and charts and graphs detailing economic information and migration patterns.

“The brain did not evolve to see the world the way it is…the brain evolved to see the world in a way that was useful to see in the past…we inherit perception…” states Beau Loto. As essential and urgent it was for the Exhibition of American Negroes to redefine the depiction and understanding of middle-class blacks in Georgia to combat racist depictions and ideas, McAfee’s Through the Layers Pt. 1 is continuing that legacy of setting new precedents of what is expected. With various options for interacting with these representations McAfee adds to the cycle of upgrading our perception of others that could start a constructive shift in biases and assumptions that would be passed on, crafting new legacies.

McAfee’s visual riffs on traditional portraiture in his reimagined photographs open a space for change that leads to awareness of doubt, questioning, and increased possibilities of who these individuals are or could be. By saturating visitors’ vision with red and blue, a new base color palette of seeing is established from the originals. In combination with 3D glasses the figures and environments shift further. The interaction between viewers and photographs is geared to provide new experiences in perception, with hopes to create a new normality when it comes to ways of perceiving.

Antonio McAfee is a photographer raised and based in Baltimore, MD. McAfee’s work addresses the complexity of representation. Through appropriating and manipulating portraits, he reworks images to provide alternate views of the figures.

He received his BFA in Fine Art Photography from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. He received a Post-Graduate Diploma in Art in Arts and Culture Management from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa). Recent exhibition venues include University of Maryland, College Park's Stamp Gallery, George Washington University's Gallery 102 (Washington, DC), and Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC).

www.antoniomcafee.net | IG: @antonioemca
| IG: @terraultgallery

Event Contact

Carlyn Thomas
443-540-1234

Event Details

Saturday, July 8, 2017, 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Repeats weekly Saturday -- until Saturday July 29, 2017.
Free

Location

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